Souped upSubarus

Southern students make their Subarus unique through modifaction

Southern freshman Daniel Bach’s love for cars dates back to his early childhood.

Each car movie he watched, video game he played or exciting car he saw, drew him closer and enthused him. Today, he drives a Subaru WRX, and the reasons he loves it are all over the map.

Every Tuesday afternoon, West Campus Parking Garage echoes the signature rumble of the EJ25-T engine; the concrete walls and ceilings of the garage tremble in reverberation. The deafening tone of engine exhaust sounds like it could send the garage tumbling down in avalanche; this is the sound of Bach arriving to campus.

“I love being loud; I love people knowing what I’m pulling up in,” says Bach.

“I’m just always looking to do stuff to it; I’m never satisfied with it,” says Bach. “I just always liked working on cars.”

The car in question is a Crystal Gray Metallic 2006 Subaru WRX Wagon, which Bach has owned and modified himself since his junior year in high school. What made Bach decide to drive a car that scrapes its belly on every speed bump and steep driveway, and wakes the dead as it drives by?

“I played with Hot Wheels when I was young, since kindergarten,” Bach says.

His love for these machines is rooted deep.

When the Mitsubishi Evo VIII first came out, Bach says his cousin bought one. Bach says rides in that car were exhilarating.

When he was old enough to drive, Bach became attached to cars of his own. He says he loved his first car, a simple Honda Civic. He knew he wanted to work on his own cars, but all he did to the Civic was install better stereo equipment. Even though he loved that car, he needed to get something more exciting, so he saved up for a real “driver’s car.”

Bach says his goal was to get into a 1990’s sports car: a Nissan 240SX. In order to accommodate the Connecticut winters, he says he ultimately decided on Subaru.

He didn’t always plan to modify the car to be what he called, “silly” or “crazy.”

“I was supposed to go in the military, so I kept it stock,” Bach says. “Once I found out I couldn’t go, I started messing around with a lot.”

In the year and a half since he has had the car, modifications include King 18 inch by 9.5 inch wheels, dressed in stretched 225 mm section tires, BC Racing coil-over suspension struts, and a straight pipe exhaust system, sans catalytic converters.

“I’m just always looking to do stuff to it; I’m never satisfied with it,” says Bach. “I just always liked working on cars.”

Bach says that whether people agree with his modifications or not, he loves that people react to it. “I love when people hate the car,” Bach says. “I love when people love the car too.”

Cosmetic modifications

Andrew Wille, freshmen sports management major, shares a similar love for the Subaru brand, and today he drives a Midnight Blue Subaru WRX STi. Wille’s modifications are not as extreme as on Bach’s WRX, but Wille says he loves the way his STi looks.

Wille’s love for football brought him to Southern. He was a wide receiver for Sayerville War Memorial High School in Parlin, New Jersey, and is now for Southern’s Men’s Varsity Football team.

His interest in cars, however, comes from nature and nurture.

“My dad is a mechanic, he has a shop back home,” Wille says. “When I want to do something to [the car], I bring it to the shop, and my dad and I do it together.”

So far, the modifications are mostly cosmetic, and they include wing supports for the rear spoiler, chameleon wrap tints for the front headlights and fog lights, and a large LED light bar mounted in the lower front grille.

Wille says he loves the way his car drives on the road, but the road is not always where Subaru drivers at Southern enjoy their car the most.

Mountain driving

Stephen Pansa, snowboard hobbyist, ice hockey player, and Southern student, uses his 2002 Subaru Forester to haul his gear around, and get up to the mountains. The car is Platinum Silver Metallic, except for the front bumper.

“One day I put the car in a ditch, and messed up the whole front bumper,” Pansa says. “I popped out the dent from the crash, and then painted over it in mint Tiffany Blue.”

That is not the only modification that makes the car stand out from the crowd, as it is also lifted 2 inches over factory ride height, and wears off road wheels and tires. Pansa says he chose the Forester because of its larger size compared to other Subaru models, but he says it was really the WRX and the STi that made him love cars in the first place.

“I remember in 2006, my friend first told me all about the brand new Subaru WRX STi, and that is when I immediately fell in love with cars, and Subarus,” says Pansa.

He has had the car, which was his first, for over three years, since Oct. 28, 2014, he says. The first time he drove it for more than an hour on the highway was on a road trip to go snowboarding at Mount Snow in Dover, Vermont. He loaded a friend and their snowboarding gear in the back and jammed out to music all the way home.

Like Wille and Bach, Pansa does at least some of the work himself, but he says he would like to learn more. All three of these students chose a Subaru to be their current car, their only car. Their reasons why may vary, but they share a love for the brand. Each of them has certainly made their car truly their own.